so basically every fancy play we justify with a dead on read? You can justify everything with the right read. its absolute nonsense to write a strategy book and be like hey guys I played in this game with a big blind who raised every hand so you know what i did? I limped my kings from the low jack!

In general thats just a really bad idea. It also has to be a super specific player type who raises limps all the time but doesn't 3bet.

I would expect that if you have players that raise you often enough to justify over limping from late position here that they also 3 bet your perceived iso raise some amount of the time.

To me this feels like a lot of fancy play syndrome.

The way you seem to be dealing with criticism is at this point really emberasing.

Before anybody tells me you should read the book first. No i will pass. the material that has been shown to me as a teaser makes me believe that purchasing and reading the entire book would be a massive waste of my time and money.

You should read the book.

Mason

Before the book's "Introduction" there's an essay written by David that explains what's going on in this book. Here it is plus a few comments by me that follow:

.........................................Why This Book
.......................................by David Sklansky


When I came back to Vegas in 2022 after being gone for a few years, I decided to start playing serious poker again. But most of the games I was used to were rarely spread anymore. So, my decision was to start small by playing $1-$3 and $2-$5 no-limit hold ’em. I was adept at limit hold ’em and no-limit hold ’em tournaments, and also had a strong understanding of no-limit hold ’em cash game theory. However, I didn't have much experience in no-limit hold ’em cash games. And I also didn’t have much experience playing against mainly amateurs and often complete “live ones.”

When I started to play these games, which are the large majority of poker games spread today, it was shocking at how badly many of the players played, and this included many opponents who were regulars in these games. At least half of them sometimes made egregious errors at some point in the hand. Errors that made you money if you played the standard style but had the potential to make you much more if you correctly took advantage of these errors once you identified them.

It also became apparent (to me) that if you were good at exploiting these mistakes, many of the small games which this book addresses were worth, per hour, as much as the typical game with significantly bigger blinds but where the typical player had a better understanding of correct strategy. I always suspected that this was a possibility because I was aware of a high stakes poker expert who now spent most of his playing time in these games. And once I was playing in them, I realized why he did.

So, what do these participants in these small games do wrong? Some of the mistakes I noticed were almost never bluffing, betting too little on the flop, not knowing when to slowplay, not playing deceptively, giving a free card when it’s wrong to do so, raising too much money preflop, calling big (sometimes very big) reraises preflop, falling in love with and paying off with good but not great hands, overcalling too much, misplaying multiway pots, and, of course, simply entering the pot with too many hands.

As a result, I decided not to be too anxious to move up in stakes. Meanwhile, I started calling Mason Malmuth to tell him about various astonishing hands where some players would almost literally throw money at me especially if I played a certain style. A style sometimes quite different than what other authors recommend.

And it turned out that Mason had been occasionally playing these games as well and had also noticed many of the same characteristics which were described above. When he realized that we were both doing things to exploit other player's leaks, he knew we had the makings of a new book. If I agreed, he would start playing more no-limit than before (especially once some other publishing work he was doing was finished), incorporating the moves we were discussing (which will be explained in the text) to see how they worked. And if they did, he would co-author a book with me about how to win the maximum in these small stakes games which featured many opponents who didn’t understand how to play well and made numerous costly mistakes.

Since the book is now in your hands, you know they worked. And hopefully, they’ll work as well for you as they have for us.

Comments: I have yet to play in a $1-$2 or $1-$3 game where I didn't see players like this. The $2-$5 games are more hit and miss with some of them not being games we would target with all of these strategies. But given what I just said about the $1-$2 and $1-$3 games where every game features some players like this, how big does your sample size need to be?

And that's why the discussion of sample size here is just silly. If you want to know what your true win rate would be in these games with fairly high precision, neither David nor I have enough hours to give a precise answer. (And if you don't think I know what I'm talking about see the chapter titled "Win Rate Accuracy" in my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics - Expanded Edition.)

On the other hand, if you're interested in exploitive strategies that can take advantage of the poor play of some of these players then this book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold 'em: Help Them Give You Their Money: Exploiting Weaknesses in Small Stakes No-Limit Hold 'em Games, should be well worth your time. So read the book.

Mason

You should seek to soak up all poker knowledge like a sponge. I found the book pretty entertaining from a theorycrafting exercise. Definitely a lot of plays I had never even considered. When reading it the material honestly is quite sound. You will immediately recognize their hand histories in the games you play, even at 2/5. It's fascinating how all fish seem to graduate from the same 'prometheus school of running away from things'. I've actually skimmed through random chapters a few times after completion and I honestly cant argue with any of it other than once you are in that chair it all feels so terribly imbalanced that I cant shake myself from thinking "this is bad, playing like a fish but with an understanding of relative hand strength is not great, surely the last decade of advanced poker training and solver work cannot be rendered irrelevant". The content is actually refreshing though, this isnt like reading some outdated book, it's actually highly relevant. The idea of exploiting players by playing exploitably yourself feels criminal when you've spent the entirety of your career trying to have some semblance of balance (even in fishy games). If I only ever raise AA and limp everything else surely people will catch on and I'll get no action, right? Welp this book challenges that notion.

The only immediate tangible flaw I found with the strategy was just pot sizes. Sure I was able to get in some good spots limping the BTN but even when I hit I just couldnt extract enough value because my opponents were less committed to their hands without facing a preflop raise. The dynamic created when a fish limps utg with J9o vs when he calls a raise with J9o is fundamentally different. They are much more likely to stack off with a pair/combo draw in a raised pot vs a limped pot. They see the chips going in and whether or not they are keeping count they know 'there's a lot of money out there' and enter a sort of sunken cost fallacy or downright FOMO to get it allin by showdown.

As someone who's not merely trying to beat the game but instead make a living I need to have a $1000/hr winrate some sessions to counter those inevitable downswings and that just doesnt happen when you play passively.

thanks I will pass.

I have limited time at my disposal. I read some sklansky books and liked them. This one i can only judge by the material i have seen so far and thats simply pretty bad.

All i have seen on here about the book leads me to believe it is pretty bad. honestly this doesn't surprise me when i look at the way both mason and david interact with people here. I cant shake the feeling that both of them seriously misjudge how good they are and how good the people critiquing them are.

Look at the article mason posted above. it states i came back to play small satkes poker and found out people are not very good. Shocker!!!

People in those games tend to fall in love with their hands call to big raise/reraises and pay off with good but not great hands.

I will exploit those tendencies by not raising my premiums and instead over limping them!

I mean come on man the book might be great but if your advertisement is some butchered hands and a grumpy dude telling people: i worked as a statistician 50 years ago i know what i am talking about!

Yeah no thats just not gonna get me to break out the credit card.

This is really quite insulting. Yes, I left my position with Northrop in 1987 to enter the world of poker/gambling full time. But if you were to look at my work, you would see that I never left the world of mathematical statistics, and much of what I've written and published is based on mathematical modeling and statistical theory.

If you don't want to read our latest book, that's fine and it's, of course, your decision. But go insult someone else. It won't work on me.

Mason

This situation is very rare at 1/2 to the point where it's not even worth considering, especially in a later position. If you're in late position and a guy in the blind is raising wildly 80% of the time or something like that then yes I agree, but for 95% of situations raising yourself is better. Really you can create any hypothetical situation that requires an exploitative play that isn't "standard", but given how rare these situations are I don't think its applicable to daily grinding.

When’re you guys going to mention stack depth as a factor lmao

I agree.

(Great review btw)

If i pick up one profitable play it will cover the $22 even at 1/2.

If i totally disagree with every example in the book, which is highly unlikely, and pickup 0 profitable plays.... that too would help forge my play style/fundamentals by reinforcing my idealogy through disagreement... i think =p

Can't wait to read it.

the idea of trying to play unexploitably in a pool of droolers who aren't trying to exploit you and who don't have the ability to exploit you has never made any sense and never will make any sense.
It's like a baseball player preparing for a good right handed slider from a pitcher who doesn't throw a slider. And is left handed.

Now that doesn't automatically mean everything in this book is correct or works in all games but in almost any left game worth playing you should be trying to exploit bad players since that's where the money comes from. If the game is so tough that you need to play gto in some 30 hand an hour live game it's hardly worth playing from a purely monetary standpoint.

So you refuse to read the book, yet you some how think you are qualified to comment on it?

Talk about taking arguments of ignorance to an extreme.......

Limping/overlimping premiums was a meta-strategy in several cash CFPs for a while. Basically, they realized that people isolate limpers way too wide (bad regs just iso their entire opening range), so you can get more money in the pot with your premiums by limping rather than opening.

That said, a limp-backraise looks super strong, so you might cap your upside with this strategy.

My apologies if you consider this to be an insult. I feel like i am merely giving you back some attitude that you are having with everybody in here.

I think you should give others the courtesy of explaining your thought process instead of pointing towards your , honestly quite impressive past achievements.

In my opinion it is fair game to poke some fun at you and point out that you worked for Northrop a long time ago when you point towards this position instead of engaging in dialouge when your work is critized.

So this portion of the book says "if you are playing terrible passive opponents who love to payoff with second best hands after the flop, you should see a few more flops."

Revolutionary.

A big reason why I think all these multiway solver + gto courses are garbage. If I need to actually use a lot of it that means the games are dead and the rake is going to eat me alive and quitting poker would be the most profitable line. Its way more +ev to make money off fish then it is to play gto against a good pro.

No. It looks like a medium strength hand trying to make a play and you'd be surprised how light you get called. One of the last hands I played I was 4th limp in with AQo in the CO and BTN straddle raised, 2 calls and I back raised and ended up getting it allin with BTN for a 300bb pot where he had 55. The key is understanding how people are playing behind you which I dont need a book to spell out for me. "It depends" or try just "playing poker" instead of using some defined abc strategy like you're playing online.

Also lol @ the 50 years ago stats comment as if somehow "old" math has become out dated over the years. Wanna bet people like Barry Greenstein and Chip were using card removal + blockers + combos 20 years before any of you heard of these things?

Unless you’re playing HU exclusively vs fish you’re going to need to understand how to beat good players


All the best

One of my criticism of 2+2 books has been that they try to be for everyone, from the beginner to the expert. It is difficult to make a book to satisfy all those audiences. I congratulate both of you for writing a book geared to a certain level poker. I think a lot of the posts critical are ignoring that you wrote up front this is for tables where people aren't going to punish for limping too much, will pay you off when you hit and won't adjust. This a guide to exploit them mercilessly.

At the same time, this is not a book for a beginner. To implement this well, you should have a feel for what the (right, solver, GTO) play is. You are going to consciously deviate from what a solver is going to do. You'll want to know why you are doing it.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to limp KK after other limpers, but like any book, you should take things that will work with your game and not worry about copying everything.

yea nobody could ever beat 1/2 nl before solvers.

you shouldn't give a rats ass what a solver says to do in 1/2 nl.

No, it actually looks super strong and 99 % when i see people doing this they would actually show up with aces.

The hand u described is an exception with very bad players (live players) involved who do not understand what a limp-reraise usually means (= the guy with 55) and what it usually means when a squeezer does not respect a limp-reraise (=u, the guy with AQ).

ya dood when i see someone 4th in who back raises its always AA!

Yes live players are bad and this is post 45 on that specific subject with another 1000+ posts in the other thread about the same topic. Why do you need to put in brackets we are talking about live players? At what point in the past several months talking about this book did anyone link it to online play? Why are you liking your own posts?

Just to follow up on this, the following is from page 43:

"By the way, another benefit of this play is that when you’re able to make this surprise raise some players won’t believe that you have a strong hand since your play seems so illogical to them. That is, since you didn’t raise at your first opportunity to do so, they’ll often think you’ve just gone crazy and refuse to fold a hand that has little chance against you. (Of course, that might change as more people read this book.)"

Mason

Yes its the oldest trick ever and noone who plays long enough is going to fall for it anymore. im not surprised its covered in the book.

Had a good laugh at the fact that u really think that book or especially that part on page 43 will have any influence whatsoever on a large group of people and how they will play in the future.

U are like an expert in statistics no?

no one will have to fall for it. when most of the table calls the button's raise, taking down the pot right there is worth a good portion of a day's income. re-raising and getting called or jammed on is just a bonus.

As Tuma says, when you overlimp a monster in your run-of-the-mill LLSNL game and someone opens for lol 8x and gets called in lol 3 spots, you almost don't even care whether your backraise is called. Taking down 32x preflop with zero rake and 100% equity denial is *printing* (while getting called is simply gravy).

But if you'd rather be the opener for 8x to go 5way to a small handcuffing SPR OOP having offered everyone good IO, go ahead and do that.

Ghasn'traisedahandintheLJ-in~7yearsandhasdone~okG

In the interview that was supposed to be the subject of this thread, I explicitly mention that regular players frequently find themselves watching a hand where a large bet is made in a spot where it is almost impossible to be a bluff and just about everyone at the table knows it. Except the player who calls. Personally, I am more interested in the fact that he will probably "fall for it" than the fact that the spectators don't.